In the video below, the place mentioned where to get boot diskette images is AllBootDisks. Compared to other web sites that offer the same downloads, this one has both the EXE and the IMG versions from MS-DOS all the way up to Windows XP.

The best part about all this is that everything is free. The only thing you have to pay for are some blank discs to burn and nothing else. See video below for details on how to make it all happen.

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How-To: Create a Bootable CD With ImgBurn

K-Meleon
Engine: Gecko
Web site: http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/

Although its name suggests this is a Linux browser, it’s not. K-Meleon is a Windows-only browser.

What I like about it:

• Very fast
• Runs on even the slowest of PCs
• User agent can be changed to "fool" web sites into thinking it’s Firefox or IE
• Tabs can be placed on the top or bottom
• Has a macro scripting language where you can program custom functions into it
• Will run some Firefox add-ons

What I don’t like about it:

• Seems better suited for Windows XP compared to Vista/7. Some wonky UI things happen in the Vista/7 environment when using it.
• Has some learning curve, particularly when setting preferences.
• Some web sites will not display correctly.

Midori
Engine: Webkit
Web site: http://www.twotoasts.de/index.php?/pages/midori_summary.html

This one will run in Windows or Linux.

What I like about it:

• Quite possibly the slimmest GUI-based browser. Absolutely no "fluff" to speak of.
• Very fast
• Very little learning curve
• The easiest browser to set preferences in
• Can be scripted easily
• One of the very few browsers that has sidebars that make sense
• Clean look, easy-to-understand icons
• User agent can be changed similar to the way K-Meleon can

What I don’t like about it:

• Windows version has no installer. You must use 7-Zip to extract to a folder of your choice.
• Has issues displaying some Flash content
• "Blanks" some web web sites on load
• Address and Search bar not resizeable (as far as I could tell)

What’s a User Agent and why should you care?

The user agent is the signature, so to speak, that a browser uses to identify itself to a web site. A web site "knows" what browser you’re using from the user agent. It also contains what OS and OS version you’re using.

If you’ve ever visited a web site that popped up a message that said something to the effect of, "You can’t use this web site unless you have X browser", it was the user agent that let the site know that.

When using an alternative browser such as K-Meleon or Midori, the UA at times must be changed in order to use specific web site functions. Both allow you to do this easily.

A good example of browser detection via the UA is Yahoo! Mail. That site on attempt to load from either K-Meleon or Midori will result in this message:

To avoid nastygrams like this, changing your UA to "fool" a web site into thinking you’re using Firefox 3 or Internet Explorer 8 fixes that issue.

Sample cut-and-paste User Agents you can use

Mozilla Firefox 3.6 running under Windows XP:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6

Windows Internet Explorer 8 running under Windows XP:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)

The Firefox identification string is the easier of the two to use and will work more often compared to the IE string.

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Two Lightweight Browsers With Familiar Engines

Today you can use a voice system such as Mumble.

[Mumble is a] low-latency, high-quality voice communication for gamers. Includes game linking, so voice from other players comes from the direction of their characters, and has echo cancellation so the sound from your loudspeakers won’t be audible to other players.

You can read the details here, but basically you have a centralized server set up that everyone connects to. Once connected you talk via a headset. The design is simple, but the system is built around low latency (you don’t want your bandwidth used up on chatting) and background noise reduction.

I really don’t have any need for a system like this, but have any gamers out there tried this and if so, does it work well?

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Voice Chat System Designed For Gamers

So what is your “impulse buy” price point for software?

Personally, I think anything under $5 would be mine. If it sounds like something I might need or use, the benefit is worth the risk of if I don’t like it. I’m curious, what our readers think so please share you thoughts in the comments.

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What Is Your Impulse Buy Price Point For Software?

Google Maps

This is the best mapping product on the internet due to the fact you can look up directions using very vague terms and still get what you’re looking for.

For example, if I go to Google Maps and enter a search term from tampa to orlando, the result will in fact show directions from Tampa, Florida to Orlando, Florida.

You may not see this as a big deal, but the fact that search even worked is a marvel of technology. I did not specify the state nor I did not specify the country. Google Maps simply knew what to do and delivered the proper result.

In addition, I can use other general regional designations and it will still work. If I enter the search from tampa to 32801 (an Orlando ZIP code), that works too.

Granted, Bing Maps will do most of what Google Maps can do, but it does so in a way that’s slower and not as intuitive. Google still rules the roost as having the best maps on the internet.

Google Docs

This may not be the best online document suite (I prefer ThinkFree when it comes to UI and feature set), but it is the fastest and easiest to share out content with. GDocs loads very quickly, imports nearly any type of document (even PDFs) and does so in a manner that’s completely safe being it’s online rather than on your local PC.

The collaboration tools within GDocs at present cannot be matched when compared to any other like free product. Share anything with anyone anywhere just with a few clicks. For a team of people, you can delegate who gets editing privileges and who doesn’t. The security of your data is also better than average; the security of your data is solid and sound.

Updated right-now Google search results

This is something that escaped most people’s radar, but you will notice since late 2009 that Google search results will show content posted to the internet even as little as 30 minutes ago. This was not present in G’s search results before. It used to be that the newest information you’d get was about a week old. But now you get results very close to the speed of Twitter – and that was no easy task on G’s part.

Picasa

Another very underrated product from the GOOG camp. This is the best free photo editor, period. No learning curve required, good solid photo editing options that people actually use (important), a wonderful UI design, super-easy import from any digital camera, the list goes on and on.

Picasa for all intents and purposes should be a paid product. It’s that good. This is a product that will make you happy.

Google Toolbar

I am very anti-toolbar by nature, but I understand a lot of people like to use them. And if you’re going to use one, G’s Toolbar is the best of the lot. Why? Because it has the features you’d use most often, such as a one-click solution for Translate. Add to the fact Google has a very powerful set of products that you can easily add into the toolbar, and you’ll quickly realize why G’s offering is the best you could use.

Strangely, it is not available for Chrome – and it should be. Granted, many of G’s toolbar features are in Chrome already, but it would be oh-so nice to get the full toolbar functionality in that browser, especially considering both are Google products. Maybe someday soon we’ll see it for Chrome?

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5 Things Google Is Doing Right

MusicBee is a free music library program which offers a pretty impressive feature set, including:

• CD ripping
• Extensive tagging functionality
• File reorganization (for example, create a Windows folder structure organized by artist and album)
• Format conversion
• Sync with portable players

Currently I am a Winamp user and the interface to MusicBee looks very similar (I really like the Winamp library functionality). I plan on giving this a try in the near future to see how well it works.

Is anyone out there already using MusicBee? If so, what do you think about it?

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A Powerful Digital Music Library Manager Program

For you IE haters out there, I have alternatives. No, I’m not talking about Firefox, Opera or Safari because you already know all about those. What I’m talking about are different IE shells.

Windows Internet Explorer uses a rendering engine called Trident. Over the years there have been a few developers that have made web browsers using the Trident engine. This means it uses the same engine IE does (meaning the pages render the same as they would in IE), but the overall browser experience is different – and always better.

It’s entirely possible that if you don’t like IE, it’s because of the way Microsoft designed it. That being said, these alternative shells may be more to your liking.

Avant Browser
Web Site: http://www.avantbrowser.com/

This offering has the ability to store bookmarks and other items online, similar to the way Xmarks does it – except this is built-in. It also a Flash animation filter – a very desirable thing that people like quite a bit. This Flash filter I speak of literally is as simple as a single click to turn Flash on or off. Avant also has custom skins available. IE doesn’t have this on its own.

Lunascape
Web Site: http://www.lunascape.tv

This one will really raise your eyebrow because it has not one, not two, but three different rendering engines in it. Which engines? Trident from IE, Gecko from Firefox and Webkit from Safari and Chrome. Impressive? Yes. This is the only "triple engine" web browser in the world, and you can switch back and forth between engines at whim.

There is way too much to list that this browser does. It is by every definition a power user’s browser.

Firefox
Web Site: http://www.firefox.com

What? Firefox? Yes, it can use the Trident rendering engine from IE. All you need is IE Tab and ta-da, IE in Firefox.

Maxthon
Web Site: http://www.maxthon.com

Maxthon’s claim to fame is that it gave IE tabs way before IE7 ever existed, but that’s not obviously all it can do. It’s packed with features similar to that of Avant listed above (such as storing of online Favorites), but has other quite useful items such as:

• A better screen capture (full screen, selected area, selected window or entire page)
• Web sniffer (a way to direct-download FLV video file)
• Super proxy (a much easier way to switch between proxies, should you use them)

..and a lot more.

An alternative shell may get you to like IE again

I find the biggest reasons people can’t stand IE mainly has to do with the fact it’s not as easily extensible as Firefox, and that the feature set is limited.

The alternative shells above will give most people the features they so desperately want in IE that aren’t there.

For the IE haters, it will make the browser a lot more tolerable to use.

Or dare I say, enjoyable?

Have you ever tried an alternative IE shell? What did you think? Let us know by writing a comment.

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Hate IE? Use A Different Shell

It is true that IE8 is the best IE you can use, due to the fact it’s the least-crashable, the most secure and so on. You’ve heard this all before. And it’s all true.

But if I were to poll the PCMech audience and ask what you guys and gals use, chances are IE wouldn’t exactly be at the top of the list. In fact I’d wager that it would probably be near the bottom of the list, if not dead last.

Neither Dave nor myself use IE as our primary browser. Dave uses Firefox and Safari on the Mac. I use Firefox almost exclusively in Windows 7. I use IE only on very rare occasions, and believe it or not also use a win32 port of Lynx, a browser ordinarily used only on Linux.

I don’t bash on anybody that uses IE, as long as you’re not using IE6. If you’re using 6, you’ll receive no sympathy from me because that browser is just plain horrible. I need not mention why it’s horrible because I’ve stated why several times in other articles.

I ask you, the audience, what browser are you using?

But I have a follow-up to that question.

What’s your secondary browser, should you use one? Dave uses Firefox and Safari. I use Firefox, IE8 (rarely) and Lynx.

What do you use?

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IE8 Now Most-Used Browser

By middle clicking on an item in the taskbar, it opens the program. Additionally, if you middle click on an open program, such as your browser, it opens another copy of the program (note: this assumes the program allows multiple instances). Alternately, if you middle click on the thumbnail (by hovering your mouse over the program in the taskbar), it closes the selected window. Yes, you could simply click the X in the preview, much like you can do with browser tabs, but the middle click is so much easier.

Ever since I found this, I have been using it extensively. Hopefully you will find it as useful as I do.

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Middle Click Shortcuts In Windows 7

It’s an unfortunate truth that there isn’t a simple 1-2-3 method for when you want to block.

Here are some of your options:

The router itself

On a basic level, a router allows you to block only ports. On an advanced level, you can block specific domains. However it’s all dependent on whether or not your router has a domain-specific block feature, which is most likely what you want to do. Unfortunately, most basic routers won’t do that per the administration program it uses.

Windows Firewall

The firewall used in Windows whether it’s in XP, Vista or 7 is application and port specific, but not domain specific to the best of my knowledge. What this means is that you can block specific ports, and block specific programs from network use, but cannot say "don’t load X web site" with it. It’s an "all-or-nothing" type of application-specific solution in most instances.

Windows MMC

The Microsoft Management Console (Start/Run/type mmc/click OK) is not easy to use for those who have never used network policies before.

To enable a policy for a specific network address in XP, you have to first add the Snap-in "IP Security Policies on Local Computer", then create a security policy. It is a difficult, tedious process that requires many steps, and it probably won’t deliver the results you’re looking for.

MMC by and large is better for managing other computers on your network instead of your own.

In Windows 7, the "Advanced" section of the Windows Firewall does in fact use MMC, but it’s still complete gibberish to those who have never used it. All you want to do is say, "I want X web site not to be available from any program on this PC, period." Not even in Windows 7 is this easy to do with its existing firewall software.

HOSTS file

Every modern OS has a HOSTS file where you can easily redirect specific domain names to root. This technically is not blocking a web site, but rather redirecting it. That’s fine since the end result is that the site won’t load, and that’s what you wanted to happen.

An example would be:

yahoo.com	127.0.0.1
www.yahoo.com	127.0.0.1

127.0.0.1 is root, as in your PC. On attempt to load either http://yahoo.com or http://www.yahoo.com (and yes the two are different), the browser will report that it cannot make a connection.

The biggest issue with a HOSTS file is that it doesn’t support wildcard entries. Or at least in Windows it doesn’t.

Using the above example, www.yahoo.com won’t load, but search.yahoo.com will.

If you added an entry of *.yahoo.com, that doesn’t work. Every subdomain must be entered manually to be redirected to 127.0.0.1.

The single largest drawback of the HOSTS method, particularly on XP, is that anybody that has access to the HOSTS file can simply delete it and remove all the redirects – and a reboot isn’t even required.

Browser add-on

One add-on that is positively genius in its simplicity is BlockSite for Firefox. And don’t worry, if you’re running 3.5 or 3.6, it’s available.

BlockSite does support wildcard entries. If you make an entry of:

*yahoo*

..any domain with yahoo in it will be blocked.

What’s even better is that you can configure the entries to be password protected, so if someone else wanted to go in and remove some of those blocks, they can’t unless they have the password.

If only this were available for IE..

Software-based firewall

This is usually the solution most people prefer because of the following reasons:

1. It’s the easiest to manage.
2. It will block all programs from accessing sites you block.
3. It (usually) does not slow down your internet connection at all.

There are many software firewalls available whether you’re using Windows, Mac or Linux.

On the Windows side, you can use the built-in Windows Firewall or any number of other 3rd-party software such as Agnitum, Comodo, Core Force, GhostWall, Kaspersky, Lavasoft, ZoneAlarm and several others.

The only real drawback to using a software-based firewall is that it will at times get in your way, so a key feature to look for is: How easy is it to turn it off temporarily?

Do you (or have you) use any of the above software-based firewalls?

How easy or difficult is it to block a specific web site? Is the feature even there? Is it as easy as using BlockSite for Firefox? Let us know by writing a comment or two.

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Blocking Web Sites 101